Street lighting programs today, and over the next several years, will focus on replacing conventional lamps with LED lamps. However, only 20% of LED street lamps will be truly “smart” through integration with lighting controls systems. This imbalance will slowly correct itself and by 2026, central management systems will connect to over two-thirds of all new LED street light installations.
ABI Research forecasts that annual revenue from smart street lighting will grow at CAGR 31% to reach US$1.7 billion in 2026.
Adarsh Krishnan Principal Analyst at ABI Research said that outside of the smart street lights themselves there will be additional opportunities for suppliers leveraging street pole infrastructure, including hosting of wireless connectivity infrastructure, environmental sensors, and even intelligent cameras. “The challenge is finding a feasible business model that encourages deployment of multi-sensor solutions cost-effectively at scale,” he hinted.
Smart street lighting applications that have seen the most adoption are (in order of priority): remote scheduling of dimming profiles based on seasonal changes, time shifts, or special social events; metering individual street light energy consumption for accurate usage-based billing; asset management to improve maintenance planning; and finally, sensor-based adaptive lighting.
Growth by market
Regionally, street lighting deployments are unique in a vendor and technology approach, as well as end-market requirements. In 2018, North America was a leader in smart street lighting accounting for 31% of the global install base, followed by Europe and the Asia Pacific. In Europe, non-cellular LPWA network technologies have a dominant share of smart streetlights today but will cede some market share to cellular LPWA network technologies, especially as NB-IoT based end-devices become more commercially available in Q2 2020.
By 2026, the Asia Pacific region will have the largest install base of smart streetlights, accounting for over one-third of global installations. This growth is due to China and India, both which not only have ambitious LED street lamp retrofit programs but also are building local LED component manufacturing facilities to lower lamp costs.
“In India and China, LED streetlights have seen a very low penetration of lighting control systems due to a nascent domestic solution vendor ecosystem and international vendors that are unable to adapt their solution to meet local market requirements for innovative yet low-cost products, “concluded Krishnan.
Low-cost solutions based on cellular LPWA network technologies followed by non-cellular LPWA network technologies will witness the most growth in the APAC region, accounting for a market share of 48% and 36% respectively of the total install base in 2026.
Usage benefits
Juniper Research paper, Smart Cities: Leading Platforms, Segment Analysis & Forecasts 2019-2023, estimates that by 2023 there will be close to 70 million units. It argued that growing open platform adoption would enable street lighting to act as a major hub point for additional smart city services, such as public safety and smart transport.
“The cost savings enabled by smart street lighting mean that many cities will look to this as a first-stage smart city project”, remarked research author Steffen Sorrell. “Choosing an open platform will be key here, as additional services can be launched from the same point, while simulataneously driving up third party vendor competition.”
